Top senators fired back at the Obama administration on Tuesday after the State Department shifted blame to Congress for the collapse of a U.S.-Russian brokered ceasefire in Syria. The back-and-forth in Washington comes as the State Department refuses to rule out further talks with Moscow despite a massive Russia and Iran-backed offensive in the Syrian city of Aleppo and an escalating humanitarian crisis there.
Arizona senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee, told TWS Tuesday that Secretary of State John Kerry “has become a pathetic figure” as ceasefire negotiations have gone on.
“How many times does he have to fly to Moscow and bend the knee to [Russian foreign minister Sergei] Lavrov before he realizes that unless we do something to stop this slaughter, … it will be totally ineffectual?” McCain said. “By the way, the Russians and Bashar Assad will stop, as soon as they’ve killed enough people and made sure that [Assad] is safely and securely in power forever.”
Just a day earlier, Kerry responded to earlier congressional criticism by saying “talk is cheap” and questioning whether Congress was willing to vote to use force in Syria. The State Department later elaborated on his statement, saying that “if Congress wants to give us other authorities or options, then Congress is able to do that, and they do have a certain leverage themselves in this process.”
South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who with McCain released a statement this week criticizing the administration’s Syria policy, said Kerry and President Obama “have presided over the complete rape of Syria.”
“[Kerry] is humiliating himself and the country by talking, and talking, and talking, to a group of people who clearly don’t respect you,” Graham, a fellow Armed Services committee member, said. “You’ve been talking to the Russians. You’ve been begging to the Russians. You have flown the wings off your plane and every time you go to Russia, they stick it in your eye.”
“All you’ve done is talk. It is now time to show the Russians there are consequences,” he added.
The senators also pushed back on Kerry’s Monday suggestion that Congress was unwilling to vote to use force in Syria. McCain told TWS that the secretary “never asked for a vote,” while Graham advised Kerry to “quit passing the buck.”
“I’m willing to vote to authorize the use of force, but that’s not the reason we’re failing in Syria,” Graham said. “The reason we’re failing in Syria is because the president of the United States has come up with a strategy that won’t work.”
“It’s not Congress’s fault. It’s the administration’s fault,” he continued.
Kerry has maintained that “there is no such thing as a military solution” for Syria, and on Monday said it would be “diplomatic malpractice” to drop efforts at future talks, though bombing by the Assad regime and Russia are not “in good faith in keeping with the idea of trying to have a negotiation.”
